Microsoft today officially announced the arrival of its personal digital assistant Cortana for France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Cortana will roll-out to these regions by way of a new Developer Preview Update thats expected to roll later in the day.
Cortana has hit a high among Windows Phone users and Microsoft is fulfilling its promise by making her available for new regions before the end of year. So far Cortana has been available for regions US, UK, China, India & Australia.
Cortana will be available as Alpha for regions France, Italy, Germany and Spain at launch and over time will graduate to Beta just like US, UK and China. Alpha means not all features will be available right away and heres how Microsoft explains it
Alpha means that Cortana is new to these countries, most of the features in the beta version are available but some are missing or coming soon. For example, flight tracking is not available at this time for alpha. Transit data is currently limited to larger cities and will expand as we have more data. Additionally, reference data (e.g. “How tall is Mt. Everest”) is also not available – but we’re working hard to enable this soon! We have also worked hard to tailor Cortana’s personality in each language (with local chit chat and jokes) to make her more locally and culturally relevant (i.e. make sure she fits in!). Cortana will also show European football (or as we Americans call “soccer”) league data, including Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, and La Liga.